38 Responses to “Knife-throwing mommy”

Yeah, I am an entertainer, and know the difference between “gimmicks” and the real thing. This woman is effing stupid to do this to her children. I am a professional, and know that there are days when you are “off”. Sometimes things don’t click like they should.

Costing your child an eye or even a DEATH is just plain stupid and bad parenting.

As part of the mother’s throwing stance, she takes a LARGE step forward, so the knives are thrown a whole 2? 3? feet. In the better quality video you can see the knives in SOME cases are being thrown, but those are going very wide of the kids. With a few days practice who here couldn’t get accurate enough to duplicate this trick? I KNOW I could.

What’s the person doing behind the board the girls are standing against? My guess is he’s pushing fake knives from behind while everyone in attendance is in on the stunt. I can’t figure out where the thrown knives are going though. It’s like watching Copperfield when I was a kid. I know they’re up to something, I just don’t know what exactly. Or maybe I’m crazy.

That’s not a trick knife board. When you see one next to a legit knife board, you’ll see the difference is obvious. That lady is actually throwing those knives. Notice how some of the knives are crooked, loose, and one actually falls down when hitting the wood.

This reminds me of the My Name is Earl episode about the family with the tradition of mother-daughter knife throwing going back several generations. It featured that girl who played Nic Cage’s daughter in “Kick-Ass.”

@pinhead: really? seems they trust her just fine, as long as they don’t get nicked, this would build trust fast..makes me think of those team work exercises where you fall backwards and have someone catch you.

Yeah — try double-clicking the “play” button at the :58 mark, going immediately from play to pause, from play to pause. It’s right after the girl holds up her two fingers — you can see the knife flying in and sticking.

In the standard way of doing a knife-throwing act, no knife is ever actually thrown once the assistant is up there. There are dummy knives hidden behind the board, in those slots you can see in it, which are snapped forward to “stick into” the board as the thrower palms the knife being thrown.

I was hugely disappointed when I first learned that.

In this one… I’m not sure on all of the shots, but I’m pretty sure. If you look at the way mom is standing in most of those shots, you can’t actually see the knife travel. She’s either too close to the board, or the camera is behind her, as the audience is, so you couldn’t possibly see it in motion. You actually see (or seem to see) a knife in the air in the first shot, but that is probably done before the kid gets up in front of the board. In most of the rest of them, you see a knife waved, you see a knife sticking in the board, and your mind is filling in the knife’s motion in between for you.

I was going to say there were some later shots which showed her actually throwing it and then it sticking into the board next to the kid… and then I realized they were from completely opposite angles and those shots couldn’t have been done at the same time. They were edited together later. I’m too used to taking movie and TV edits for granted.

Does no one here throw darts? Ever see someone with a snootful of beer toss triple 20’s all night long?

There’s no way she’s palming 12″ knives. She’s really throwing them, and they’re really sticking. It’s not a gimmick, or an editing illusion. She’s not even aiming really close to the kid. She’s got easily 6″ of clearance, and if the kid doesn’t move, it won’t get stuck.

With diligent practice, you can come within an inch or two of what you’re aiming at when standing inside of 6 feet whether you’re tossing knives, darts or bowling balls. Just keep your target outside that margin of error!